'Yo' from Israel

OMGosh! Those darned Israelis did it again! Just when you thought it was possible to boycott, divest and sanction
(BDS) anything and everything from Israel without disrupting and inconveniencing your life, especially in technology, along comes another innovative, disruptive, clever Israeli development app that BDS people will want to use but can't because of their distorted, hate filled principles!

That app, Yo, has inadvertently gone viral, attracting more than 2 million downloads with the simple premise of sending anyone the word “yo.” It has sparked derision and, with more than $1 million in funding, near certainty that a bubble is about to burst in Silicon Valley.

But it takes much to dampen Arbel’s spirits.

When he first shared the app with a trusted circle of advisors in Israel saying “Meet Yo, a zero-characters communication tool,” one of them called it “the stupidest app” he’d ever seen. Since then he’s learned to ignore the stream of snark in the press. “They said this will kill humanity,” he says, smiling.

There’s no doubt in Arbel’s mind that Yo will actually become more than just a service to annoy your friends, but change the way businesses communicate with their customers and governments with their citizens.

The key isn’t the message itself, he says, but the time and name behind it. And with the glut of text and photos we see on our phones every day, people are ready for a tool that takes far less effort to use. There’s some truth to that, but Arbel knows Yo needs to do more, so the next big feature he toying with is the ability to paste links and photos, with just two extra taps instead of six on traditional messaging apps. “That’s four taps you could be spending with your kids,” Arbel says, in a nod to Stephen Colbert’s satire on the app.

Thanks to its open API, 2,000 developers have already started creating services that integrate with Yo, he says, including an alert system in Israel to warn people of rockets being fired over Tel Aviv, a service called InstaYo, that sends you a “Yo” whenever a favorite Instagram user posts an image, and World Cup Yo, pinging you whenever someone in the tournament has scored goal.

The immediate future is in restaurants. Arbel wants to see coffee shops like StarbucksSBUX -0.78% asking customers for their Yo user names so they don’t have to scrawl them with a pen on a cup, and then shout them over the hubbub of other customers. “You have to stand there for three minutes instead of working on your laptop,” says Arbel, who admits to regularly working nights and weekends. “It’s primitive!” Instead customers can just “yo” the restaurant to receive “yo’s” in return.

Oh. Goody. But wait, there's more!

Anthony Wing Kosner, also of Forbes, thinks the app is perfect for the iWatch (you do have one, don't you?) and could even be a "twitter-killer."

Sounds good to me.

Meanwhile, as Israelis develop Yo and other advances to improve life, Arab Hamas bombs are launched from Gazan mosques, schools, hospitals and other civilian locations into Israel, about one every 10 minutes, https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson fulfilling the hate of the Hamas Charter to kill Jews. However Hamas's leaders run and hide while urging their followers to remain and serve as human shields....

OMGosh! Those darned Israelis did it again! Just when you thought it was possible to boycott, divest and sanction
(BDS) anything and everything from Israel without disrupting and inconveniencing your life, especially in technology, along comes another innovative, disruptive, clever Israeli development app that BDS people will want to use but can't because of their distorted, hate filled principles!

That app, Yo, has inadvertently gone viral, attracting more than 2 million downloads with the simple premise of sending anyone the word “yo.” It has sparked derision and, with more than $1 million in funding, near certainty that a bubble is about to burst in Silicon Valley.

But it takes much to dampen Arbel’s spirits.

When he first shared the app with a trusted circle of advisors in Israel saying “Meet Yo, a zero-characters communication tool,” one of them called it “the stupidest app” he’d ever seen. Since then he’s learned to ignore the stream of snark in the press. “They said this will kill humanity,” he says, smiling.

There’s no doubt in Arbel’s mind that Yo will actually become more than just a service to annoy your friends, but change the way businesses communicate with their customers and governments with their citizens.

The key isn’t the message itself, he says, but the time and name behind it. And with the glut of text and photos we see on our phones every day, people are ready for a tool that takes far less effort to use. There’s some truth to that, but Arbel knows Yo needs to do more, so the next big feature he toying with is the ability to paste links and photos, with just two extra taps instead of six on traditional messaging apps. “That’s four taps you could be spending with your kids,” Arbel says, in a nod to Stephen Colbert’s satire on the app.

Thanks to its open API, 2,000 developers have already started creating services that integrate with Yo, he says, including an alert system in Israel to warn people of rockets being fired over Tel Aviv, a service called InstaYo, that sends you a “Yo” whenever a favorite Instagram user posts an image, and World Cup Yo, pinging you whenever someone in the tournament has scored goal.

The immediate future is in restaurants. Arbel wants to see coffee shops like StarbucksSBUX -0.78% asking customers for their Yo user names so they don’t have to scrawl them with a pen on a cup, and then shout them over the hubbub of other customers. “You have to stand there for three minutes instead of working on your laptop,” says Arbel, who admits to regularly working nights and weekends. “It’s primitive!” Instead customers can just “yo” the restaurant to receive “yo’s” in return.

Oh. Goody. But wait, there's more!

Anthony Wing Kosner, also of Forbes, thinks the app is perfect for the iWatch (you do have one, don't you?) and could even be a "twitter-killer."

Sounds good to me.

Meanwhile, as Israelis develop Yo and other advances to improve life, Arab Hamas bombs are launched from Gazan mosques, schools, hospitals and other civilian locations into Israel, about one every 10 minutes, https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson fulfilling the hate of the Hamas Charter to kill Jews. However Hamas's leaders run and hide while urging their followers to remain and serve as human shields....